The present invention relates to integrated circuit design and, more particularly, to a system for prototyping an integrated circuit design that includes both analog and digital circuitry.
In electronic design, a mixed signal integrated circuit (IC) is an IC that has both analog and digital circuitry formed on a single semiconductor die. The separate analog and/or digital circuits may be supplied in the form of one or more intellectual property (IP) cores, also known as IP blocks or simply IPs, which are pre-designed re-usable units of, for example, logic, cells, or a chip layout design. A single IP block may be digital only, analog only, or mixed signal, including both analog and digital portions.
Mixed signal technology has enabled the design and production of System on Chip (SoC) ICs which, as their name suggests, may provide a complete processing system within a single semiconductor package, or even on a single semiconductor die.
Mixed signal SoCs can be complex to design, manufacture, test and use (i.e., develop software for use with a specific SoC), and being a relatively recent development in the world of IC design, there are limited tools to assist the IC designer/developer in verifying designs before beginning mass production, or developing the software to control and use the completed mixed signal SoC.